In the Still of the Night

I have been spending a little bit more time at my parents' house lately and I wanted to write a sort of homage to my childhood home and my family but nothing came to me. I realized I had summed it up best with this post from last year. There was always something magical about our house at night: 

Nights at my familial home were generally very still ones, the quiet broken now and again by the sound of my Daddy getting a drink from the refrigerator or going to the basement for a smoke while he was reading, playing chess and listening to music. I would spend time in bed, staring at the textured cream ceiling above me, imagining him in his work clothes; button up shirt, khaki pants, dress loafers now replaced with moccasin slippers. He'd be sitting with books all around him, his little portable chess board propped up in his lap or on the table in front of him, chess books with the symbols that always confused me opened to various pages and marked with random strips of paper.

His legs would be crossed and he would be leaning over a book or the chess board far enough so that one sharp elbow could be propped on one thin knobby knee. Two fingers would lie pointing up next to his nose, his chin resting on his thumb, his fat lips puckered, deep in thought. Periodically he would break his sitting position and run his fingers through his dark, thinning hair.

I would toss and turn in my bed, pick a book from my headboard bookcase, read, open the window, close the window, pull out a notebook, put it back, pull it out again. My room was the on the top floor of our home, the whole attic to myself, partially because of my insomnia, partially because I was the oldest of five children. Listless and frustrated I would sometimes get out of bed and sit at my vanity. I would look in the mirror and brush my thick dark locks over and over again until they were glossy and smooth and my scalp slightly ached from pulling and pulling.

Back in my bed I would listen to my family on the floors of our home below.

Depending on the ages of my siblings the night's stillness might be broken by a baby’s cries, or a toddler’s laughter. Sometimes newborn brothers or sisters would waken and I would hear Momma rising from her bed to comfort and nurse the new members of the family. I would spend time in bed, staring at the textured cream ceiling above me and imagine my Momma in her white nightgown, little rosebuds littering the flannel-like material, the neckline stretched and slightly torn from the strains of pulling her breasts in and out of it. She would be back in her bed, baby cradled in her arms, nursing loudly in the night. Sighing, leaning her head back against the knobby oak headboard, in and out of sleep herself. She would sometimes sing:

"Rock me to sleep in an old rocking chair and make me a child again,
sing me an old-time lullaby, one with a sweet refrain...
just lay your head on my shoulder, the angels with keep us from harm,
rock me to sleep in an old rocking chair, safe in my Momma's arms"

and sometimes:

"This little girl/boy of mine, this little girl/boy of mine,
a tiny turned up nose, two cheeks just like a rose,
this little girl/boy of mine, this little girl/boy of mine,
You'll never know, just what your coming has meant,
I'll tell you something though, it must be heaven sent..."

There was silence again as my mother and sibling slumbered, holding each other tight.

I would finally fall asleep listening to the sounds of my family and our house. In the morning, ironically, I was always the first to wake and would descend from my attic abode tip toeing through the rooms. I would sometimes take a moment to look at my peaceful family, devoid of personality and speech, sleeping soundly.

I would often be jealous of them, how easily they lay in repose, how serene they seemed. Other times I would be proud of my secret knowledge: the Keeper of the Night, the Knower of What Happens in the Still.

Lovely Zombie

I work on the computer every day, I flit around the internet like a wee ghost, an older slightly more mature Casperetta with a new haircut and too many responsibilities. I download my assignments from FTP servers in Germany, the UK, down the street in Pittsburgh, once from Hong Kong but only by mistake. I fix people's mistakes and speak their words, write their misshapen colloquial speak and hand it off to blood thirsty marketing researchers who are sometimes nice, sometimes gruesome in their greedy collecting of human opinions. Money makers, shaking, speaking, shaking again, bits of gold cascading from plump breasts, lean bills straddling poles and grinding incessantly in front of the bleary eyed customers.

I live a fairly cloistered life. Cloistered. When I was in college I looked at an apartment in this giant fading building too far from campus in a building called The Cloisters. It had been a subdivision of a long gone nunnery that housed the incoming 'recruits'. Potential Brides of Christ. Although the location was impossible for me I still wanted to live there, still take the time to drive by there when I'm in town, longing for that giant stone building, the long halls with slight perspiration dripping from them because of said stone, the dark, dark woods floors that made my feet look like bright slips of Puma ensconced wisps, young women cloistered inside like a herd of unsure penguins, quiet, as damp and cold as the walls around them. 

No, I'm not cloistered. It's more a self imposed hermit-ism. When I make myself join my extended family in celebration or for dinner I have such a good time I wonder why I don't force myself to do it more often. Until of course I am forced to do it more often and I decline.

"I have too much work!"

"I am behind on several projects."

"I have to finish the housework, already started making dinner."

Hanging up on quickly so as not to be embroiled in an argument. Hanging my dark head in shame because I really, really want to go. But not really.

My children entertain me, keep me grounded and not floating vacuously near the ceiling, floating but grounded in this house and not up, up in the sky like an escaped balloon. They delight me, frustrate me, make me tired when I have no right to be...these exciting and infuriating little imps I have formed and dropped from my body.

But yet the internet is still my world. Working, working, working, reading, staring at random strangers photos, watching them make music or art, watching them make fools of themselves, catching up on the news, speaking my mind, using my fingers to make things come from my mouth which would never be lighted upon my tongue in other circumstances.

Would I give it up?

If I were forced to let all the wonder go would I be a zombie, albeit a lovely, non-rotting zombie? 

Do you think I'm afraid?

Favorite Recent Photos

I'm not one of those mom's with a DSLR strapped across my front (and no offense of course if you are). As a matter of fact my Power Shot was horribly crushed by Olive a year ago and I've been using my phone with it's measly 9 megapixels since then. I happen to love taking photos though so I have literally thousands on my phone and more still on my clouds on the interwebs. All of my photos go right to my Amazon cloud which also houses my important documents, all of my music, books and movies.
I 'store' photos on Facebook and also on Instagram which has led me to some heated arguments with some people because I always say I would be a small fee for either of those programs because they house my photos and some of my videos.

Regardless when I can't sleep at night or when I'm waiting in line, etc, I find myself perusing Instagram more and more. I even find myself squaring off photos I take in my mind, knowing which ones will look better in that format and which ones don't.

Here are my recent faves:
My nine month old puppy Blueberry

My Grandmother's memory table at my parents' house

A cooler than cool Elijah

Jeremiah and Elijah twilight bike riding


Rosey, sixth grader

Seeing Things

(NSFK)

Once upon a time there was a me that was fairly popular and outgoing (so essentially I am letting you know that this is a fiction piece) and I had a bunch of friends. Two of these friends were a couple that were older than me maybe by about five and seven years, and at the time of our friendship I was friends equally with both the husband and wife. Let's call them Saul and Jane.

Jane was incredibly thin and well made, dark blue eyes, long straight blonde hair, not too thin, not too thick and long bony fingers that with all honesty freaked me out more than a little bit. She was always tired and although quick and fairly intelligent she whined a bit too much about aforementioned fatigue and was a tad bit more bossy than circumstances required, i.e. she sometimes was a bitch.

Saul was just as thin and the kind of thin that warrants he must always be wearing skinny jeans instead of baggy and again warrants that his face is always in a mask of thoughtful contemplation and usually boredom despite whatever the situation around him entailed. As a contrast to Jane's lightness he had very dark hair and very dark eyes and brought his fingers to his mouth when deep in thought like he was smoking even when he was not.

Better than acquaintances, but not quite friendly, I spent time with them on and off and we either in a group discussed common literary themes or television themes etc, with Saul being much better read than Jane but not entirely as well read as I was. I like to think we had a good friendship, the three of us for as thin and serious as the two of them were I was round and flighty and it was an interesting mix.

I grew up walking around our small town because my dad believed it was much, much better to walk when we could instead of drive and because of this I knew the back alleys and shortcuts from here to there and there and back. It was on one of these days that I was cutting behind a retail shop's loading area and into a small alley that couldn't equip cars any longer because the stones of the old curbs were falling apart and suddenly I came upon a couple in a very involved, very passionate embrace. I recognized Saul immediately even from behind and stopped dead in my tracks, silently stepping backwards to the doors of the dock, hiding in the shadows. I crouched down and through the cracks of the metal I could see that he was holding his partner's hair roughly in his fists and kissing her passionately and it was with this that I noticed the woman was not Jane and her hair was dark, the same color as Saul's, and thick, curly. The softness and the yet aggressive force Saul was grasping this small woman with almost made me run away in sheer embarrassment, I was ashamed at espying this moment but also incredibly intrigued and aroused. He had her practically pinned up against the ancient brick wall of a condemned apartment building and although they were fully clothed they were writing against each other in forceful passion.

I got up from my crouch half way and moved further into the shadows so I could sneak away without being noticed when a man burst from the retailer's back door, opening it with a loud crack, bam. He was carrying a large piece of furniture and didn't see me where I was hiding. I backtracked from where I had come from in the first place and although it took everything I could not to look back to see if the couple was happened upon by the man or if they had abandoned their embrace in time.

Oddly I felt hurt and ashamed as I went to my destination by another route. I realized with an extreme reddening of my face that I was jealous.  

I never fully realized and still don't to this day whether I was jealous of the woman, Saul's partner in desire or Saul himself, wrapped up in an intensity, the rush of excitement and danger spinning in the pit of his gut. Being unfaithful is sad and unfortunate but the intensity with which he and this woman embraced each other was not a one time thing, not a passing fancy. Or was it? Maybe I was just too naive to know the difference, maybe I still am.

When I reached the library, my intended destination, I sat with wondering for a while, caressing my lips without care and silently wishing to myself that I smoked, like Saul. What an impactful happening! My skull was buzzing and my dark hair was blowing into my face, thick, dark curls lying on my forehead, falling into my eyes.

I finally gathered myself out of this daze long enough to enter the library, search out the books I wanted and turn around just absentmindedly enough to run straight into Saul's thin chest with a clumsy oof. He looked down at me with a smirk forming over his generous mouth and eyebrows burrowed at me.

"Hi, you getting anything interesting today? I didn't know you would be here." He seemed perplexed by her and alone with him in the stacks she felt warm, lazy. Like she could very well lay her head on his chest and rest for a while.

"No, no, of course you wouldn't. I haven't seen you since the party at Jim and Amy's. Duh." Oh, I was such a dork. Duh? Really? I stammered, stepped back, curious at why he would want to keep such a closeness between us, why his hands were lingering on the soft space above my elbows, his fingers gently pulling him towards him in an odd magnetic way.

"Well, see you later!" And with that abrupt exclamation I turned and ran to the front desk to check out. Saul didn't follow me and I couldn't help but think, turning the feel of his fingers on me, the closeness of him to me in the stacks, why would he be so close to me? Why the smirk? Did I have something weird on my face? Was he a sex addict or on some kind of drugs?

Leaving the library, walking home, messing around in the kitchen, going into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror, tracing the lines of my face with one finger, feeling lips on mine at first gentle and then roughly parting mine like-

And then I was brought about to reality by a buzzing in my pocket.

My message icon was lit up with 15 new messages, the most recent one being: "why were you following me? i love u it hurts to see u like that. what is wrong?". The first one being: "i have a few minutes today. i love u, meet me. i love u"

All from Saul.

For Mindi

I've never been all that great at having friends. I'm insecure, clingy, aloof, selfish and all together obviously confused and confusing.

There is one shining anomaly of this inability of mine and her name is Mindi Lynn.

I should remember how I met her but I do not. It was a very, very long time ago and she had crimped and kind of long dirty blond hair and was often swathed in tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirts and jean shorts that were frayed above her knobby knees and thin calves.

I do know we became friends easily and over time through many over fraught teenage trials and tribulations and later over my many pregnancies and her many moves far away from me, back again and then far away again we have remained close despite our few and far between text messages and missed encounters during home visits.

Sometimes I find myself pining for the days when we were bored and had nothing to do but think of ways to get into some kind of mischief, of telling the same stories to each other and gossiping, of me lying my round dark head on her bony shoulder and whining about some boy I was oh so very much in love with.

I find myself missing the time before we had our own cars and our parents bussed us to each others' houses and around various parts of our home city, miss the innocence of cuddling when it was good enough for us two girls to be alone and comfy without the want of a male counterpart.

I enjoyed the wildness of her, how much she loved animals and how careful and kind she was to them. Although I always shrugged her interest off because I did not share her love of animals whatsoever, I was always jealous of her easy way with them, the way her eyes lit up and glowed when she was dealing with them. She was so much more comfortable in the woods than I was and I would follow her on long walks with slight trepidation, spurned on by her obvious wilderness knowledge.

I also was jealous that she was essentially an only child being that her brother was grown and out of the house before we became friends. I wished with every bit of me I could have my parents all to myself like she did and was silently angry at her when she complained about them.

Last week when I was on vacation something hugely tragic happened to her and she being the awesome and unselfish person I have never been able to be didn't want to bother me while I was away and thus I found out about her tribulations today. When I spoke to her and heard the pain and misery in her voice it took all of my adult-ness and all the reminders of my children, my home and my work not to pick up and drive to where she is, many hours away from me.

I have a real friend out there and she is in pain and there she was consoling me, of course she was.

I wanted to take a little sliver out of the internets to thank her for being the amazing and wonderful person I have loved most of my life on this earth and will continue to love until my dying breath. To thank her for being strong for her mother during the tragedy that has befallen their family and to further thank her for being the wonderful and excellent daughter she will be into the future. I want to thank her for impacting me in many ways, for sharing part of my childhood with me and for being my shining star in the distance through my many ups and downs as an adult.

I also want to thank her for the memories that we shared and the memories we will make as time goes on.

I love you Mindi, I always will.

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
-A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Downstream (from some Filth)

(NSFK)

Two women were playing at the park with their combined nine children, all under the age of six it looked like. I was surprised and gathered that maybe they were a day care or babysitters but wasn't entirely certain of this.

I have four children and I'm the oldest of five so it shouldn't be surprising to me that other people have large families, but these women seemed potentially younger than me and there were no cars other than ours in the parking lot, this park being a little further out than most people would walk to and being they would be walking past two other parks in the interim. Magic women with their many children and their little red wagons.

They were an odd pair as well, the younger of the two had a giant belly and huge arms but tiny little legs and was wearing a very well worn lavender tank top and baggy black sweat-shorts. She had very blond hair pulled back in a little bitsy pony tail that stuck out like a bundle of straw on the back of her head. She had fairly nice features, a broad mouth and light eyes that turned up at the outside corners and I could see her being very pretty if she was took better care of herself.

The older of the two or at least it seemed that way, had a baby on one hip and was so thin it looked as though she might collapse under the infant's weight at any moment. She had a short severe bob which was dyed a very shiny black and wore one of those hemp necklaces I never liked and never understood being that number one, they're ugly as hell and number two, they seem like they would actually hurt your neck wearing them. The one thing I kept noticing about this woman was that her elbows jutted out at such an impossible angle it made me stare, look away and stare again. I came away from literally staring at this woman being sure she suffered from some kind of bone disease or something of that sort to induce those odd elbows.

As is my nature I stayed back a distance from the odd couple and their many children, walking Blueberry around the perimeter of the park while I kept an eye on my children with their buckets wading in the stream.

After a while the women brought their monster of a group to the stream and my children retreated away from the chaos in order to better catch crayfish. But inexplicably I stayed down stream for a wee bit after starting to pick up snippets of the women's conversation.

They spoke loudly and laughed often but the topic of their conversation was more for hushed tones and embarrassed glances in my opinion. They were talking about how the heavier blonde woman was "fucking her neighbor" who, and this gets much, much more interesting and horrible, is "like Danny's age, 10th grade!"

They continued to laugh and the thin woman is not as shocked as she should be and the children are uninterested but are completely able to hear the women's conversations. Oblivious they start to disperse towards the muddier bank across the shallow stream.

"I made him go down on me for a half hour, I didn't even feel anything. He wasn't very good at it." the blonde said unabashadly, her hefty breasts and arms shaking with laughter.

No shit he wasn't good at it you giant disgusting oaf! He's 15 years old.

I have a 15 year old sister and two younger brothers who were 15 not so long ago. I have four children who I wouldn't want assaulted by an older neighbor woman and then treated so entirely callously. I was starting to get so mad but instead of saying something or doubling around the park and meeting my own children upstream I instead wandered around the area where the two continued their cacophonous carrying on about this boy.

"Did he come really fast? Like in his pants?" The thin woman's eyes were greedy with interest. She did to her credit drop her voice slightly when saying this.

"Not really, no. Actually he didn't come at all, I didn't let him screw me." The blonde woman said with pride, "I've got enough kids already to deadbeat baby daddy's!"

It's called contraceptives you pig. So this poor boy had to force himself between this beast's legs and he doesn't even get to get off?

I was tempted to called Child Protection Services or the police or my mom or Jeremiah but I don't. For some reason I came closer to the women and the children, reigning in Blueberry's leash a little tighter. I can't think of any excuse to talk to the women, so I just stand there and wait till they notice me. Blueberry barks finally at the children splashing wildly now and the women turn and look at me.

The thinner one takes me in and smirks, then bounces the baby on her hip and stares me down. The blonde woman is not so bold and with increasing awareness of my appearance and her own, her behavior and my own and how I had obviously heard their entire conversation and that's why I was now staring at the two in disbelief she turns her back and actually hangs her head. She moves into the stream with the children and sits on the muddy bank and begins to play with the youngest toddler, now covered almost entirely in mud.

The sight of the muddy child makes me remember my own children suddenly who were still in sight but further away than I was comfortable with. I turn my back on the woman and the thin woman, still staring at me says under her breath to the blonde woman, "Some people have more money than sense."

Which makes no sense whatsoever.

I didn't counter this nonsense laden remark, I did however chuckle mightily when I wrote it just now.

MORE MONEY THAN SENSE! How about more morals than filthiness? More integrity than slimeballishness? 

More sense than senselessness.

When we left the park and made our way past them I didn't glance their way but Rosey said to me in hushed tones, "Momma those ladies scare me, I feel bad for those kids!"

I do too Rosey.

The Re-Introduction of Me

In order to get back on the blogging train (woo woo) (did I really just say woo woo?) (this isn't really going exactly as planned) I thought it might be a good idea to reintroduce myself.

But then I considered the fact that most of my 'good ideas' generally turn out to be bad ones and thus...

I decided to reintroduce myself anyways.

My name is Erin, I am older than previously imagined and I have been maintaining this blog, a bastion of sanity and often sole pillar of my sense of community for four years. I started the blog to keep in touch with my extended family and friends instead of constantly emailing them photos and stories about my children and then it became a window to share first my side handmade crocheted gifts business, then my very part time freelance editing and writing, then my more full time freelancing, fiction writing and warehouse of writing samples for my resume.

AND THEN I got my first full time job ever a few months before I turned 30. I work at home as a German to English translator and transcriptionist. It's hard.

I have four children. I share custody of my daughters Rosey, Olive and Maxine Jane with my ex husband.

My son Elijah lives with my partner Jeremiah and myself full time and recently we added a puppy to our family and the children named her Blueberry. 

She pees when she's excited, which is often.

This is me and that puppy who's luckily not peeing on me in the photo:

My oldest daughter Rose is 12. She's sporty and lovely and most of the time she's uptight and more uptight and yes, uptight. She's a perfectionist and easily stressed. I encourage her to drink more water and take deep breaths which stresses her out even more. She also happens to be incredibly kind and empathetic, I find myself in awe of her sweetness on a day to day basis.

Her sister Olive at 9 couldn't be any more different. She's artistic and generally laid back, sometimes too much so and likes to relax, sing, relax, draw, write stories, lay around and not pay attention to anything anybody else is saying ever, especially when it concerns her chores. She's a flighty and wonderful human being.

My seven year old daughter Maxine Jane is as I often call her, 'the love of my life, bane of my existence'. She has always been a sensitive, generally difficult little thing and because of this I've spent most of my life the last seven years caring for her and helping her overcome a lot of her issues. She's now a much more well rounded little girl, happier, healthier and yes, unfortunately still prone to incredibly horrifying fits. Despite or maybe because of all of this I adore her and so would you. 

My baby boy one is four years old and was a wee babe when I started writing this blog. I love that I have this little journal online recounting his existence on this earth. He is a happy, funny and delightful little boy with a creative mind and a quick tongue (albeit sometimes he is impossible to understand, a product of infant hearing loss that is now repairing). He's the joy of my every day.

My life partner Jeremiah is a mercurial and deeply talented man who I absolutely adore. We were teenage sweethearts that broke up and in a fit of madness rekindled our romance years later. Let's just say it was much, much, much better at 26 and 29 than at 16 and 19.

So was reintroducing myself a good thing or a bad thing? I feel so-so about it. And I think I need a nap.

Summertime Blues

Turning 30 didn't work out too well for me. I had usually been of a pretty bright, optimistic and generally rosy disposition until then and that is when a creeping malaise set in to my skull.

Or maybe it began directly after my birthday when my beloved grandmother died? 

Or maybe it began soon after my grandmother died when I went through the most incredibly difficult and heartbreaking (and achingly personal) experience of my whole entire life?

Who knows. All I am sure of is that my energy is sapped from time to time, I wallow in buckets of self pity more often than I ever have and worst of all, I can be bombarded with waves of body drenching sadness that although it is usually easy to overcome still depresses me because of it's blasted existence.

I have a ukulele and before I started making dinner last night I began learning a new song, "I Can't Make You Love Me" originally done by Bonnie Raitt and recently redone by Bon Iver, either way I've always loved that song. And of course it makes me cry. Then I became overwhelmed while making dinner because the puppy and the boy child were directly underfoot in our tiny kitchen and would follow me in and out of the house as I went back and forth to the grill and then back to the kitchen. So I was frustrated, already tender from the dumb song playing and then every time I would pass the game room where Jeremiah was blissfully napping on the way out to the grill, boy and puppy in tow I would get angry.

Then the combination of sadness, frustration and anger starting boiling around in my head for the rest of the night while I thought over and over again, 'I like my job, it's fulfilling, I adore my children and am proud to care for them, I share custody and it's a wonderful thing, and although I share custody I handle all my daughters' school work, medical needs/insurance and all of their clothes and shoes purchases/cleaning and that's just fine, I am happy to take care of my home and it's occupants, budget our finances and take the blame when absolutely anything goes wrong in the confines of my increasingly burdened responsibilities, but this boat is taking on too much water and if someone doesn't bail me out I will surely go under. Say that ten times fast.

By the end of writing this short and whiny bit on my long neglected blog I have already started to feel better. Maybe this whole process of catharsis via blogging is more important than I had recently assumed.

April 30th, 2004

Although the bar I was working didn't serve alcohol and wasn't housed in a pub the clientele was still as potentially volatile. Teens swarmed me from all sides, blocking me into the bar, yelling out for more pop, more pizza, asking how much could they get for free, requesting this song and that from the DJ in the sound booth behind me.

I listened to them all, waited on them with patience and when the wave finally subsided I stepped up to the booth and looked in, folding my head into the crooks of my arms for a moment of rest. I watched my friend who was in charge of the music for the dances the Teen Center held weekly listening on his own personal earphones to something very different than what was playing for the teens on the dance floor. I watched him for a moment and appreciated the peaceful look he always had when he listened to music. As of late he had looked thinner and I knew him to be anxious and a bit morose. His eyes were dark and always mixed with a sense of unsure and incredibly sure of himself. When he finally met my gaze his eyes did shine a bit mischievously as he slid off his headphones and motioned me closer to him, a smile creeping across his sprite like face, a faint uneven mustache growing around the curve of his lips.

"Lemme guess little girl, they want Mo' Money Mo' Problems and Tha Crossroads?" Smiling wider now he gently pawed at my hand for a moment and asked for a water. He smelled of cigarettes, sweat and faintly of something sour. I was sure that it wasn't necessarily natural to worry about someone older than you, but I still was. I gathered he was unhappy, gathered that he was fighting some demons, gathered that he was tired and sad. I always had the feeling I wanted to wrap my arms around him, hold him close, beg him to tell me what was in his head, but I never felt it was my place. I was just a little girl he knew, I told him my problems and not the other way around.

After the dance was over and we cleaned up in silence, listening to a band he suggested to me that met in between of the two styles of music we enjoyed. We both had walked to work that day and had decided to walk around together towards Main St. and talk and smoke. He listened while I complained and cried about my boyfriend, who wasn't really a boyfriend but rather a menace and he said nothing for a very long time. I thought he was annoyed with my blithering girl talk.

He stopped and looked at me, reached out and rubbed my shoulders with his small soft hands. He was a small man but still taller than me and he looked down into my eyes. How could someone's eyes be so wise and yet so clouded with confusion? He was an enigma to me. He brought me into a generous hug, hugs I had loved so much to get from him and without the slightest sexual force he brushed his lips on mine and then hugged me again. In my ear he said very softly,

"There are good people and bad people in the world. (Your boyfriend) is bad and he will always be, you are good and you will always be. You are a light and my little girl."

He let me go and then just walked on. I stood there for a second disbelieving that somebody had spoken such sweet, kind words to me, like something out of a novel, like the way people talked in my dreams. The unexpected whisperer of truths and wisdoms my friend walked on and I hurried to catch up with him. He took my hand in his and we walked a ways and when we were closer to my house than his, we parted and I went home.

I spent time with him on and off during the years to come, our friendship turning into closer friends and then into not as close acquaintances with the passing of time. After I was a mother and busy and changed we ran into each other and I was so incredibly happy to see him it hurt. We went to the local coffee shop and although I had daughters at home with a sitter waiting for me we talked and talked for two hours.

He told me about his wife who I had known from high school and about how she was pregnant with their first child, his second child. He was excited, rounder, clean and healthy looking, almost buoyant. When we parted again it was with promises of keeping in touch and although we didn't I felt that we would see each other again and looked forward to when we did.

But we didn't. My friend Anthony Lewis Snow died 7 months later unexpectedly, eight years ago today, April 30th, 2004. When he died he was the same age I am now. He was an interesting man, a lovely man, a sensitive man, a rough man, a soft man, sweet, caring, brusque, intense and yet easy to get along with. He was a riddle and an open book and I loved him very much.


 I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved. -Samuel Butler

I Talk Shit. Literally.

I am a secret keeper. I might not do that great of a job keeping your secrets but I have so many of my own secrets locked away in my little dark head.

I seem outgoing and friendly but really I'm never totally honest with you. I won't really tell you what I feel, just an abstract version of it. I'm not lying to you, I just don't want you to really know what I'm thinking.

Those kind of sad things being said I decided to in an act of catharsis share something with you, my readers (or any of you that are actually left from The Great Blogging Decline of 2012).

My brother Benjamin is tall, lanky and has an effervescent personality. Sometimes he annoys the hell out of me but I mostly and generally adore him. He also is, despite our nine year age difference, pretty much my only friend. He also is a pretty gassy fellow. His burping and farting is legendary as well as is his prolific pooping. It seems like he's always taking a shit, talking about taking a shit, planning on taking a shit.

He often stops at my house for lunch once or twice a week and then poops, gets the boy child all riled up and then leaves. He did this the other day and I had happened to be up at my parents house later in the evening and low and behold there he was on the shitter again. It then dawned on me that the reason I notice his excreting habits and think of them as strange is because I never poop. I have never once in my life considered myself constipated or even irregular but when I Googled both the terms I found I could be considered as such.

To let it be known I only poop once every two or three days. And before I realized that this was potentially unhealthy I was delighted with my disposal system. How wonderful to only have to deal with pooping twice a week! I have been dealing with the shit of four little people for the last 11 years, 22 if you count since my younger siblings have been born. If I pooped every day it might just throw me over the edge of sanity.

I really didn't want to talk about it with anyone because Ben still makes fun of me for the time I came up with the idea that cheese has cow hormones in it and makes me depressed, which I still think is valid. So I took matters into my own hands and started taking the detox colon cleanse set that Jeremiah bought, took two pills and then stopped using because it gave him incredible stomach cramps. So yes, the pills that were giving my partner horrible stomach cramps just seemed like the absolute best option.

Although I didn't have horrible cramping I shit myself silly for two days straight before I got fed up, my asshole got sore as hell and I had taken fifty thousand hot baths. I stopped taking the pills and haven't pooped since.

I may die young and I may be ten pounds heavier because of my slow acting digestive system but for pete's sake it beats taking the time out of my very busy day to take a dump.

I don't have time for you, poo. You stink.

I Serenade Elly with a Halting Version of Love Me Tender

For Christmas I got my darling Olive a ukulele, a tuner and a cutesy ukulele kids book. She didn't touch it once except to take this photo:


So I started messing around on it and voila! I became an uke addict in several weeks. At first it was difficult because although I can read music I have never played any instrument and aside from watching Jeremiah play classical guitar wasn't really sure how you played/strummed etc.

I learned though and loved it.

Now my friend Elly who plays ukulele like nobody's business is sick and I guest uke'd for her 'cause she's got the unholy shingles from hell. Let's all wish her speedy recovery!!!! HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER SWEET ELLY GIRL!

Regardless I posted a video for her and am on her site today.

If you promise not to make fun of me either publicly or privately I will link you. OK? Promise? Uke Me Tender at Buggin Word

Well Check Up's My Ass

I don't like to take our children to the doctor that often because honestly 'well check up' seems like an oxymoron when you're in fact taking the children to a hot bed of illness for essentially no reason.

So I skip lots of check ups and once about every two years, other than in the case of the multiple cases of strep throat and ear infections our children are blessed with every year, I take all four children together to get weighed, measured, vaccinated and eye exam'd <---- I just made that up. So clever.

Regardless I made this maneuver the other day with Rose, 11, Olive, 9, Maxine Jane, 6 and Elijah 4 with a reluctant life partner Jeremiah in tow. Every year I think it's a good idea to get everyone's check up just done and over with and although Jeremiah reminds me of the horrors of the previous years I still do the same thing.

First Max had to change her clothes four times before she felt comfortable enough to go on the short walk to our doctor's office.

This is her waiting in the waiting room with Jeremiah:


Then each child had to be told over and over and over again on the walk, in the waiting room and in the exam room that we had no idea which children were going to get which shots and how many. All I knew is that Rose was missing one required chicken pox vaccination and so as far as I knew she was the only one getting a shot. It took forever for the nurse to weight and measure my lovely giants and then even longer to take a history and ask pertinent growth/milestones/health questions about each child.

Not to mention the excruciatingly long eye exams where Maxine decided she didn't 'want to be tested right now!' and could only read the top line on the chart. She also told the nurse she didn't really know her alphabet (she can read) and that she had to do the symbol part that toddlers do instead. She is a joy.

After all that madness it turns out that all the children are wonderful and exceptional and although Max doesn't know how to tie her shoes and Elijah can't write his name they seem to be doing just fine.

The room seemed so freaking small:


Then the shot tally came. Rose was getting three, Olive two, Elijah four and Maxine not a one. She then began to taunt her siblings and shake her butt at them, "All right now! Shake yo booty, shake yo booty!" in front of the doctor and when we admonished her for this she locked herself in the hall bathroom and screamed for ten minutes.

Our doctor happens to be a very young actually kind of strange yet cool woman (when I say very young I mean my age of course) and she agreed to guard the bathroom so that Max couldn't make a run for it. Then Jeremiah and I split up the remaining three kids and I went in one room with Rose and a nurse while he stayed in the other with Olive and Elijah. It turns out he lucked out because his two were tough as nails without any tears and Rose was a mother fracking mess.

"NO! No. Mom I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. MOM! No! Oh my Gosh! I can't do this, tell them no! I can't." Nothing like a shaking, sobbing, normally tough 11 year old to top off an exceptional doctor's office visit.

I wonder if next year I'll do the smart thing and split the visits up over several days/weeks.

Probably not.

Updates and Surprisingly Enough...A Puppy

You might have read my short fiction piece Ezra that I had submitted to several short fiction contests and which was still in the running when I posted it here on Blogging is for Dorks. If you did you may have been of the opinion of the three editors that sent me lovely and helpful emails about how they felt although I have as one editor put it, 'an incredible and undeniable talent' and that I may be as the other put it, 'wasting my time in such serious and potential shock for shock value content' my work is not ready for publication on their sites and thus not in the running for the contests' prizes. I can roll with that.

You might have also read my whining about my Grandmother's death AGAIN.

But what you don't know is after much more than a year in the making Jeremiah and I have adopted a puppy which our children named Blueberry Bertha (after the aforementioned dead Grandma). I have always said I wanted the perfect puppy and would even pay an arm and a leg to make sure I got the perfect one.

In the end it turns out that was me being an asshole because we all know just like there is no such thing as the perfect baby, there is also no such thing as the perfect puppy.

Because my children are completely and totally dog obsessed we made a list of our favorite dog breeds and then saved them on a search list on Petfinder.com in order to get email updates if any of these breeds came into our area.

And there she was, Blueberry is half Wire Haired Pointing Griffon and half who knows what because the Puppy Mill that was probably breeding Blueberry's purebred mother into an early grave got pissed when she became pregnant with an unknown father's puppies and promptly dumped her at a pound in Ohio, pregnant. This particular pound has had problems with this particular breeder in the past but say there is nothing they can do about it. I have no idea why they would do this but hey, that's how the asshole crumbles. That sounded much better in my head, by the way.

Regardless Blueberry and her siblings showed up on Petfinder and by the time Jeremiah, Elijah and I made the two and half hour drive there Blueberry and her brother (I like to think of him as Huckleberry) were the only two of her litter left. Her mother had also been adopted earlier that week. The women at the shelter told us that all the families that had came in didn't want her or Huckleberry because they were the most wiry of the bunch. Really?

We adopted her right then and there and took her away from that sad, horrible and over crowded place which very much changed my mind about shelters and adopting dogs instead of buying from breeders.

The girls met her on Monday night after coming home from their Dad's house and shit a proverbial brick. They have all been excellent, as has adorable Blueberry who is already well on her way to being house trained and likes to nap on Honorable the giant stuffed lion.

Here she is, revel in her adorableness:




If you are in the Ashtabula Ohio area and want to adopt a very, very nice puppy AKA Huckleberry you can find him here: http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/22334557

Heaven

Sometimes I find myself daydreaming about what heaven is like in the most childlike ways possible.

I will think of happy, healthy children bounding around on white clouds like fluffy trampolines, surrounded by chubby Care Bears and plump yellow stars with comically smiley faces.

I will think of rolling green fields with patches of bright wildflowers and a scattering of dense trees in tightly bound groups, perfect for the picnicking people under their canopies. Quilts laid out and big wicker baskets filled with juice boxes and nicely wrapped peanut butter and jelly, crackers and cheese, celery with cream cheese. Couples with children playing charades and giggling, people on their own stretched out with a book in their laps, couples holding hands and talking about in depth and coupley type things, secret things I can't hear.

Sometimes giant crocodile tears form in my eyes and fall like much heavier masses on to my cheeks, running down my neck like rivulets. Selfishly the heaven I most covet is the one where my grandma is making me scrambled eggs at the stove and she's telling me about something random and inconsequential and I'm sipping my coffee milk and my cheeks are rosey because of how very warm her house is. I slip my fuzzy slippers, fuzzy slippers I keep at her house next to her purple satin bed, off my tiny feet and stretch out my toes to admire the red paint she painted my nails with the night before. She puts my eggs on a plate, gives me rye toast with blackberry jam and slices a tiny sliver of butter and lays it on top of the fluffy yellow eggs before she peppers it to death and then puts the plate in front of me.

She'll sit across from me and just drink her coffee, just a little bit of milk in it, just like I drink it right now and she just stares at me and watches me eat.

"Is that good Magoo? Is that just the way you like it?" She smiles and reaches across the little round oak table to squeeze my chubby little hand in her thin wrinkly one.

Then the daydream is broken with a lurching and nauseating halt because that thin wrinkly hand is burnt along with her thin wrinkly body into a million billion tiny pieces of dust, part of which sits in my Momma's front living room.

I watched that hand being funneled with IV's so many times during so many transfusions, the very thing that kept her alive and in my world.

When she decided that she didn't want those tranfusions anymore that thin wrinkled hand became even more thin and wrinkled, wizened and weak and I held it so tight even in the very end when she was gone from me.

I'm afraid heaven will really be my Grandmother welcoming me into her celestial kitchen and then smacking my butt super hard for being such a baby these last 8 months since she died. She'd be mad that I was such a turd while she was in hospice, how I shut down and how instead of helping her pass through this life to the next I yelled and cried and was mad and begged her to stay with me, to change her mind.

I am ashamed at the way I acted, ashamed that I sat at her bedside and pleaded for her to change her mind. I even tried to bribe her with a nice warm bath at home, she so wanted to take a bath at the end when her mind was dying and her body was dying.

Hopefully the real heaven is my Grandma will have seen and known all these things and she'll take me into her arms, pinch me lightly and say, "I've missed you so much my sweet baby girl. I'm not mad at you. Now let's get you something to eat!"

Ezra

(NSFK)

This piece I wrote after a particularly emotional weekend of watching the movie Sylvia about Sylvia Plath and reading her poetry and The Bell Jar. It's entered in several fiction competitions so if I happen to win any of them I will have to take it off this site. I would love any feedback you might have and be warned, it's not a very 'nice' piece per se. Read with caution I suppose.

Ezra sat in the bar on his own, he looked creepy and sad. Unfortunately for him and for the uncomfortable patrons that shared the bar with him he looked every single inch the junkie that he in fact was. With his dark greasy head down and forehead parallel to the shiny bar he could watch his reflection ever changing along the grains of wood shellacked upon it’s surface. He himself was unsure why he came to this particular bar but it may have been the only one he could ever remember going to. As a younger man he hadn’t been very much the bar going type.

Starting at around 7pm that evening Ezra rose from his spot at the bar and made as though he were going to leave much to the satisfaction of the other clientele and the bartender. When he stood his clothing uncrumpled around him and straightened like starched garments, bland in color and in fashion. He left a dollar on the bar although he did not order a drink and walked with a lumbering gait to the restroom at the very back of the bar, ten feet away from where he had been sitting. When he exited the restroom he passed up his spot at the bar as if he were on his way out of the establishment and instead upon reaching the large mahogany doorway he made an about face, finally lifting his countenance to the appropriate human angle and took in his surroundings for a short moment. Obviously liking what he finally saw around him or making his mind up about something even unrelated to the environment he then returned to his seat at the bar, head down again, fixed gaze again. He did this about every hour on the hour until last call. Every other time he did this he would with voice exiting directly to the bar below him ask for a draft beer and a glass of water. The bartender later commented that Ezra’s voice was sure and steady, with an almost attractive quality belying his appearance.

If we could peer inside Ezra’s mind, first parting the thick swathes of brown unwashed hair, tangled upon tangles, then making a polite incision in the side of his pock marked face, marked by the uncontrollable picking he did at teenage acne, we could peal apart that marked dotted skin and the blood would flush from the parted piece and it would lay lifeless and limp from his skull, dead tissue opposing the owner’s deadened psyche.

But if we could do all that (and I’m sure that some could) we might then be privy to the fact that Ezra had suffered abuse at the hands of a much older man for many, many torturous years. Ezra was a few months older than 12 when the man his parents trusted and later took blackmailed amounts of cash from first entered him. Sometimes Ezra would be glad for the attention, shut off the pain or the embarrassment just long enough to enjoy some of the hurried caresses on his pimply cheek or equally pimply back. Other times he would black out, possibly drugged and not care until later when he felt sore and misused and sick. Then he would cry in his mother flaccid arms, breathe in the smoke she carelessly blew in his face. She would say, “There, there Ezra. Go to your room. I’m going to work.” And she did go to work, she wasn’t a fat prostitute or a careless junkie abusing Ezra in the strangely forgivable ways. She was just a tired woman who worked and had a tired husband who worked and the combined nature of the two were too uninterested and yes even too tired to care what happened to their son.

Ezra remembered his abuser better than he remembered his own father. He supposed when able to suppose anything at all that he never really looked at his father, just looked through him. He always had ample time to look at his abuser long and hard before the man would mount him sweatily. Ezra would study the man’s thin black hair which was oddly Hitleresque and if it was a toupee it surely didn’t move during this man’s heavy exacerbation upon Ezra’s orifices. His abuser had a Pekingnese nose which sparkled with snot upon ejaculation and a thin drawn mouth which oddly disappeared into the heavy recesses of his ridiculously fat chin and neck with every strange and awkward thrust.

That night at the bar Ezra didn’t think about the atrocities he endured as a child, he didn’t fill his thoughts with venomous clouds of puff for his mother’s inabilities or perhaps joint guilt, he didn’t plot revenge or feel despair.

The whole night he instead thought of a girl that he loved once. A girl that loved him too, if only for a brief moment. She gave him momentary joy and yes, although Ezra was abused and horribly scarred he had lived a fairly normal life, partied with his fairly normal friends, attending school and college with fairly normal results. It was during these college years at an fairly common college party that he met his girl. He fell in love with her almost instantly in an annoying and clichely cloy fashion. He followed her around his own house party all evening long, memorizing the lines of her round body in order to fantasize about her body while attempting to work himself into masturbatory sleepiness. Her face was generally plain but her generous mouth more than made up for it. Her clothes were bright and her shoes very boyish. Her dark hair was as generous as her mouth and stopped like puffs of clouds lingering above her shoulders as if they were threatening to rain on her.

Her friend introduced Ezra to her at some point in that casual way young people introduce each other.

“Oh, Jane. This is Ezra. This is his house.”

“His house! Ha! I had no idea. Well Ezra, thanks for letting us trash your house.” She put her arms around his slouched shoulders and he was so very glad he was sitting because she pulled his head into her breasts and gave him a tight squeeze. Why would she do that?

“Thanks. Well, whatever I mean. You can come here anytime you want. There’s a lot of people who live here.” His face burned on the inside but his pallor never changed on the outside. So strange he was.

And it was true, the giant house was given to him by his abuser to do with as he so fit. He had parties, slept in different rooms, on the floor, on the velvet purple couch with the painted golden tassels, in the top floor’s claw foot tub just because he has seen it done in the movies. People came and went, squatted there. His mother came and cleaned, left without saying a word to him. He would fill up makeshift ashtrays with half smoked cigarette after cigarette, eat whatever was in his path and then left it where he had eaten it, left it sitting discarded and then rotting. He sold drugs, bought drugs, dealt with scary large black men with even scarier larger black guns and didn’t feel one iota of fear. Didn’t feel one thing until he met Jane.

That night she said one or two words more to him but he did notice her every so often peaking her slanted small eyes at him. He had seen that type of interest on many people’s faces before, the ‘what’s wrong with Ezra?’ look, the ‘why is he like this?’ look, the pitying glances from Jane were enough to make him lock himself in the aforementioned top floor bathroom and shoot up enough dope to put him to sleep, take him to that brink of sleeping and dying he loved so much, or thought he loved so much considering he could never really remember the actual physical feeling of it.

Two days after meeting Jane she came around to his house again, this time in the day, this time wearing much less bright clothes but no less boyish shoes. Her hair shot out in two blunt horns off the back of her head and on the very top she wore a big red bow, clipped on to one curl brushed off of her forehead and pinned back the the top of her skull.

He didn’t hear her come in to his house, didn’t hear her rummage through the rickety yellowed cupboards looking for cleaning supplies and food. Didn’t hear her swear under her breath when she couldn’t find any. Didn’t hear her leave and come back again laden with bags of the supplies she had been previously searching for and bags of groceries to fill his fridge which had never seen a piece of fresh fruit once ever in four years. Ezra only saw her hours later at his sink washing the fifth load of dishes since she had started. She had made a makeshift vacuum out of a plastic weed baggy and a rubber band and swept his house with the old red sweeper his Mom had brought over months ago and had promptly forgotten about. She had scrubbed the yellowed cabinets and had found with satisfaction they were white underneath. She had cleaned every bathroom, although Ezra winced at the idea of her wading through the filth and fecal matter, the drug paraphernalia, the festering sickness of it all.

She poured him a gingerale with ice and made him a tomato sandwich with miracle whip and swiss cheese. She sat across from him at the table he never even realized was there before and watched him eat, chin resting in two adorable tiny hands. Although he was aware how ravenous and animal like he must have appeared to her he was always beyond caring what others thought about him. Not for an innate sense of being judged but rather for an innate laziness and the knowledge that people will always despise him in the end, that he was rotten inside. So why even try?

She took his clothes from his house in giant black bags and he doggedly followed her into the street and to the neighborhood laundromat, which he never had once entered. She washed his clothes, folded them, asked a neighbor for the use of some of her laundry baskets because she didn’t dare put his clothes back into the bags she originally transported them.

“Murphy’s Law Ezra. Aren’t you a biology major or something like that?”

He followed her the whole time, watching her little body sway while she sang to herself, head bobbing to the sound of whatever was in her head. She barely said a word to him the whole time but didn’t seem to dislike the fact that he was there following her.

After the laundry, filling the never used dresser like she had the never used cupboards and refrigerator she told him she would be right back and left, closely the door gently behind her.

Although fairly certain she would never come back he didn’t not return to the top floor restroom he had spent the last two days in since the party and shoot up the remainder of the mind numbing drugs. He instead went from room to room to inspect Jane’s work. The phone rang and instead of it echoing from somewhere amidst the hoarded junk and filth the phone rang clear and true from an end table in the front hall of his home. He answered it. “Hello.”

“Is this Ezra Horowitz?”, a stern voice inquired on other line.

“Ummmm....” Ezra wasn’t sure how to answer, his mind was still foggy and suspicious from the drugs.

“We’re looking for the son of Mathilda Seymour Horowitz. His name is Ezra, do you know him? Are you him?” Not so stern anymore but unmistakably impatient.

“Sure, this is Ezra.” Why not?

“Ezra, your mother was injured outside of her workplace in a drive by shooting. Obviously she wasn’t the target but she was seriously injured. She is at St. Sylvester’s on W. Brady St. Do you know where that is?” Now the voice was kinder, still impatient. Ezra wondered if the woman he was speaking with wore one of those folded nurse’s hats. Did they still wear those? Had they ever wore them or was he just imagining that? He made up his mind to ask the voice on the other line if she was wearing at hat when she abruptly interrupted his thoughts.

“Well Mr. Horowitz, your mother’s information shows you are her only contact. You should come and be with her. She’s quite damaged and sadly to say in a lot of pain.” The voice was wrapping up her call, passing the buck now. She had done all she could do.

“Thank you for calling.” And Ezra gently set the phone in the receiver. He had expected to cry upon first hearing the voice’s news but the tears in his glassy and practically colorless light eyes remained orbital, never left his lids or slid onto his cheek. He didn’t blink until they were finally dry and then he laid down on the couch to wait for Jane in the dark.

She arrived an hour later laden with more shopping bags. She had bought Ezra linens and a comforter for his bed, socks and boxers, under shirts and button up flannel shirts and three pairs of cargo pants. One grey, one olive and one khaki. She even bought him a pair of thick bulky pajama pants and a matching fluffy and almost feminine pajama hoodie.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash and handed it to her. She took it without any argument and put it into her purse.

She made him noodles with butter and basil and parmasen and watched him eat just like at lunch time. She washed the dishes and they went to the only bed in the house with the new linens she had bought and made the bed together. Jane took off her clothes and Ezra took off his and went and took a shower in the tub he thought he would only ever sleep and shoot up in. Washed and fairly hygienic for the first times in years he got in bed with Jane and made her come with his mouth. She rolled and sighed and groaned but nothing was stirred in his continuously slack organ. The only thing that was stirred that night other than Jane’s clit was his heart.

The next morning when he woke up she was gone. There was oatmeal sitting in the microwave with a yellow note stuck the front of the machine. “Eat up. Enjoy your new clean house. Goodbye Ezra.”

He never saw Jane again.

Now he was sitting at the bar, thinking about her. As he stared and barely moved other than to blindly take small sips of the beers or water he ordered every other hour he imagined her like a tiny little gargoyle perched on his shoulder, making some absurd face and grimacing at the smell of him.

“This is going to be last call.” The bartender directed this at the remaining three people, Ezra and a couple at a table as far away from him as they could get and still be in the bar.

Ezra raised his head and smiled at the bartender shyly. He rummaged in his pocket, pull out a crumply and visibly dirty $50 bill on the bar and slowly smoothed it out with one large pale hand, blunt fingers making sure the edges were flattened and the bill was laying out entirely. He stood there for a moment, staring at nothing in particular and headed to the restroom once again.

Later the bartender told the police that there was only two shakes of a lamb’s tail before he heard one loud, ear shattering boom. He ran to the back to find Ezra slumped next to the bar’s one dirty urinal, terrifying black gun lying alien like on the beige and black checkered tile. His head was bloody and misshapen and his neck and back was partially slumped over his sitting body. In his left hand, unfolded and straightened out like the $50 bill on the bar was Jane’s microwave note.

“Eat up. Enjoy your new clean house. Goodbye Ezra.”

Literary Tattoos

I have spent a bit of time on contrariwise.org looking at literary tattoos and coming up with what line or poem or quote from the literary vaults I would put on my body and where.


Bukowki's 'Bluebird' is perhaps my favorite poem of all time (or at least for this month) but I have found it near to impossible to pick just one or two lines from it. If you happen to know the poem or get the chance to clicky on the link, give me your favorite line or two and let me mull it over.

This guy picked one of my less favorite poems by Bukowski 'my doom smiles at me'...and an obscure line from it as well: But hey, to each their own. I do like the type font though.

Here's another Bukowski tattoo:

Which is an excerpt from Love is a Dog from Hell.

I don't like this actual tattoo but I love the poem:



i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) -e.e. cummings


One of my favorite quotes is from Henry James, who is also my favorite author. -I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.


And of course Hemingway has "There is not friend as loyal as a book."


Just because it's boring me to list these ideas I have I'll wind up with two quotes from Barrie's Peter Pan which has a very special place in my heart.
“Oh, the cleverness of me!” -Peter Pan

Peter: Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about grown up things again.

Wendy: Never is an awfully long time.

When the Short People begat Giants the Sixth Sign was Revealed

Jeremiah and I are not very tall people. He is around 5'8" if that and I am under 5'3".

We also happen to have very tall children. Granted, three of these children do not belong to me and Jeremiah, they belong to me and my 6'5'' ex husband BUT

...this is my blog and I'll go with whatever fucking logic I want so go jump out a window or something ridiculous like that.

Or don't, which would be fine as well. Better yet maybe you shouldn't jump out a window at all, I think it would be better for both of us if you didn't do that. OK? OK.

Regardless my point is that I have this weird future vision of Jeremiah and I standing at one of our kids' graduation parties or proms, insert family occasion here, surrounding by four giants. Lovely, beautiful giants but giants nonetheless.

Our pediatrician likes to makes guesses on her patients' adult heights and rewards herself when she's right. (Talk about a long term gambling problem) So the other day she took her turn at guessing my kids' adult heights. (Also she gives herself a 2 inch leeway which is bullshit)

Rosey, my eldest daughter got the most specific height 5'8''-5'9''. She'll supposedly be our smallest child...more than 6 inches taller than me.

Olive, (who will be 9 years old on Sunday!) will be 6'0''-6'2''. And actually I might guess taller considering she has two aunts taller than that on her dad's side and she's built just like them.

Maxine Jane who was very underweight and under height (is that even a term?) for the first five years of her life consistently is now approaching giant status with gusto. She will be 5'9''-5'11''.

Elijah will be in the same approximate height category as Olive, 6'0''-6'2''.

Wouldn't it be crazy if I had birthed and raised a gaggle of super models!? I'm not sure if that's the lifestyle I would want my children to lead but hell! They might all be naturally very thin and won't have to do uppers and coke all the time to maintain their weights. Maybe they could all be those natural type thin people like Gwyneth who eat macrobiotic raw foods and do yoga and pilates.

What do you think?